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Think outside the box: Being green at the end of life

Editors' note: Sounding Board is one person’s take on a many-sided subject and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of U.S. Catholic, its editors, or the Claretians.

Joe Sehee is executive director of the Green Burial Council (greenburialcouncil.org), a former Jesuit lay minister and spiritual director, and a senior fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program.

Urban planting: Turning blight into bounty in the inner city

Armed with soil and seeds, Catholics in blighted cities are taking social justice into their own hands.

In Camden, New Jersey a jumble of railroad tracks, freeways, and abandoned factories lace through the Waterfront South area on the Delaware River just across from Philadelphia. During heavy rains, a nearby wastewater treatment plant frequently leaks raw sewage onto the streets.

Olga Bonfiglio is a freelance writer, organic gardener, and lamancha goat handler at a small dairy farm in southwestern Michigan. She blogs at olgabonfiglio.blogspot.com.

Parish resources for growing a community garden

Practical, hands-on actions are the best way for individuals and faith communities to put their faith into action, says the Michigan Catholic Rural Life Coalition (MCLRC). Here’s how they say to get involved and get growing.

Parish Farmer’s Market:

Olga Bonfiglio is a freelance writer, organic gardener, and lamancha goat handler at a small dairy farm in southwestern Michigan. She blogs at olgabonfiglio.blogspot.com.

Urban planting: Turning blight into bounty in the inner city

Armed with soil and seeds, Catholics in blighted cities are taking social justice into their own hands.

In Camden, New Jersey a jumble of railroad tracks, freeways, and abandoned factories lace through the Waterfront South area on the Delaware River just across from Philadelphia. During heavy rains, a nearby wastewater treatment plant frequently leaks raw sewage onto the streets.

Olga Bonfiglio is a freelance writer, organic gardener, and lamancha goat handler at a small dairy farm in southwestern Michigan. She blogs at olgabonfiglio.blogspot.com.

Parish resources for growing a community garden

Practical, hands-on actions are the best way for individuals and faith communities to put their faith into action, says the Michigan Catholic Rural Life Coalition (MCLRC). Here’s how they say to get involved and get growing.

Parish Farmer’s Market:

Olga Bonfiglio is a freelance writer, organic gardener, and lamancha goat handler at a small dairy farm in southwestern Michigan. She blogs at olgabonfiglio.blogspot.com.

Eating is believing: A U.S. Catholic interview with Chef Kevin Gillespie

What you put on your plate says something about the kind of person you are, says this Catholic gourmet chef and reality TV star.

Kevin Gillespie comes from a long line of Southerners: “My parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents are all from the South,” he says. They hail specifically from the Appalachian Mountains, where the traditional diet depended heavily on what was in season and grown locally, thanks to minimal opportunities for preservation.

Leave no trace: "Uncontacted" people in South America

The modern world threatens the existence of a small group of our own species.

Multinational mining interests, illegal logging, and slash-and-burn agriculture are among the many threats to the fragile ecosystems of South America’s rain forests. Efforts to protect them often cite the important role of rain forests as a preserve of plant and animal biodiversity or focus on their importance as the “lungs of the world.”

Star power: The future of solar energy

The energy policy of the future should be sung to the tune of “Here Comes the Sun.”

Events out of Japan persist in an irradiated gloom. The disaster unfolding in Fukushima Daiichi represents a level of calamity for which adjectives have yet to be invented. It’s quite possible that in the end, in a replay of the Chernobyl disaster, areas around the plant may not be suitable again for human habitation.